I am making (trying to) small batches of antennas and to cut the elements I made fixtures to hold 1/16” brass brazing rod. I sourced rods that are 36” long and while I could set up a separate fixture and use my nomad 3 with the door open to cut the rods - I was wondering if there was an inexpensive hand tool I could use to rough cut the rods to within say… 5-10mm of the edge of the fixture (after I have secured rods in the fixture). This would save me a fair bit of time as my fixtures have a lot of screws to keep the rods in place during the cutting. Maybe in the future I will replace the screws with a cam lock mechanism but I’m just not there yet…
I was thinking of a mini circular saw or something like that but wanted to ask here for some input before throwing $$ at it.
I attached a picture of what the fixture looks like. You can see some longer rod sections sticking out of the fixture - that is what I want to trim off with some kind of tool that will be reasonably fast. I don’t need the cut to be particularly clean as the end pieces are waste in the process, but I do need the cutter not bend and mangle the rods.
Or, you could just clean up the ends with a die filer:
I suppose if I had to do this project I’d probably just sacrifice a blade on my Jointmaker Pro:
Though before that, I would just use a hacksaw and a jig for it (drill a hole into the end of a sacrificial L-shaped block, make a cut partially through the block, then clamp on the exposed end — hang on, I’ll do a 3D model showing what I mean)…
I would think a simple Dremel (or similar brand) tool would work once the brass is mounted in the fixture. A small pair of bolt cutters would work to get your length prior to installing in your fixture.
I cut lots of small brass tubing and struggled until I found this ridiculously cheap mini cut off saw. With the addition of some improvised wood fences and stop blocks I’m able to cut hundreds of pieces to pretty good precision (less than 0.5 mm variation) in a few minutes. The edges are pretty clean as long as the blade is sharp. Not usually a fan of HF, but this fills the bill.
The first thing I would do is line up one end of the brass pins, so they don’t need to be cut. Then I’d cut the other end in a precise manner so I wouldn’t have to cut again. (You know, cut once … and only once. )
Since Harbor Freight was brought up ( ), I’d be looking at this combination due to its versatility. It uses available grinding wheels and can easily be mounted into a fixture for stationary use.
I like that tool a lot and it actually reminded me that I have a very old angle grinder out in the shed. Maybe if it still works and I can find wheels for it - I can try this method with the tool I have(if I can find a nice thin grind wheel for it).
The cuts need to be very precise which is why I’m doing it on CNC. I know that antennas can have quite a bit of slop in their measurements and still function but in this particular case I want it to be within +- 0.1 mm for the pin lengths. The relatively high frequency of the antenna means that small errors can impact the performance and also I am going to be making small batches of these and offering them for sale in the drone market. There are a lot of good antenna options out there (none quite like mine of course lol) so selling a sloppy antenna isn’t going to get me much positive feedback even if the antenna does perform really well. I actually tried trimming the pins with the end mill with the door open but I didn’t like unrestrained pins flopping around near the end of the cut. It seems like a good way to destroy endmill.
That is a really cool saw. I really want to cut them in the fixture though as it would be a lot faster just to zip down the end with a saw. I’ve seen some good small grinders and such recommended which is what I had in mind (confirmation bias… I know….).
If the grinder route is slow or too messy or mangles things - I will take another look at this.